The new
Prominent on the back page was a column announcing a program under which single men between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five were permitted to request relocation and job training elsewhere in the Republic, a living wage to be paid until such time as the men were established in their new lives. It was open to “White Men, Jews, Apostates, Negros, Mulattos, and Others—All Welcome.” It attracted considerable attention in town.
There were only a few volunteers. Many were transients who had been passing through when the accident happened and saw no reason to stay. Some were young men chafing at the friction of martial law. All were accepted for relocation.
The first convoy left town November 3 with a cargo of twenty-five civilians.
Some had families. Some waved at sisters or parents as the transport truck banged south from the A P parking lot in a gusty, cold rain.
Some were smiling. Some were weeping. All of them promised to write. No letters were ever received.
Clifford Stockton often thought about his father, especially when the soldier was visiting his mom.
His father was a commodities broker living in Chicago (or who
He never visited and he never wrote. But twice a year—at Christmas and on his birthday—Clifford would get a package in the mail.
There was always a card with Clifford’s name on it and the appropriate sentiment: Merry Christmas. Happy Birthday. Nothing unusual there.
But the
One year his father sent him a Nintendo game machine and an armload of cartridges. Another time, UPS delivered a radio-controlled scale model P-51 Mustang. The least exciting gift had been a fully equipped chemistry set, confiscated after two weeks when Clifford dropped a test tube and stained the living room shag beyond repair. The most exciting present had come last May: a two-hundred-channel programmable scanner that could eavesdrop on police, fire, and emergency frequencies—as well as on cellular telephones, though hardly anyone in Two Rivers had possessed one.
Clifford had not thought much about the scanner since June. Since the invasion, there had been no power to plug it into; it languished in the closet in his room, on the shelf above the coat hangers … ignored, but not entirely forgotten.
Tonight Luke was visiting. Which meant Clifford was confined to his room after nine o’clock. Which left him with not much to do.
He could read. The library was closed permanently, a fact Clifford still had trouble grasping, but the cashier at the Silverwood Mall Brentano’s, a friend of his mother, had gone to the store with her key last summer and “borrowed” a bag full of science fiction paperbacks for him. Clifford was working his way through
But he wasn’t in a reading mood, and when the downstairs television fell silent (his mother had been showing Luke her videotape of
The scanner, neglected on the upper shelf, caught his eye. Clifford decided he ought to brush the dust off, if nothing else. He stood on a chair and lifted the metal case down.
He put it on his desk. He liked the way it looked there, the liquid crystal display glittering in the lamplight. He extended the antenna and plugged the cord into the wall.
He hit the scan button and let the internal logic search the airwaves. He didn’t expect much. One of the Two Rivers Police Department patrol cars was still allowed to roam around town, so there might be a little police chatter; or something from the fire department, under new management since Chief Haldane died. But both channels were silent.
Idly, he tuned to what should have been the marine band—and suddenly the room was full of voices.